One of the driving factors behind the sunscreen craze was that medical studies observed how long exposure to ultraviolet rays leads to skin cancer. Environmentalists were already talking about ozone depletion towards the end of the twentieth century. Cumulatively, the people of the west, who loved basking in the sun for long hours, began rethinking their recreational ways. The trickle-down effect was, of course, felt across the world.

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While sunscreen has become a staple in most skincare regimes, it has had its repercussions. Vitamin D deficiency is largely becoming an epidemic. The reasons are aplenty: an urban lifestyle, where people are avoiding the slightest sun exposure, where several tropical people suffer from lactose intolerance, and where it is not advocated enough that skin with deeper melanin requires three to five times more of sunlight exposure and instead, these people tend to avoid the sun even more given the tanning effects of it.

Now, while it is only pertinent to follow the ‘don’t step outside without sunscreen’ rule and also the ‘catch some early morning sunlight’ rule or ‘take vitamin D supplements if you cannot’ alternative, what is talked about less is the economic burden of sunscreen.

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For this experiment, I took the current prices (discounted on some sites) of popular sunscreens in India and checked their cost per gram.

The application part is interesting. It is recommended that we apply sunscreen all over our bodies, especially the exposed parts. However, in behavioural terms, I would stick to only three categories for now:

1.2g/day is the daily usage, provided that one is not reapplying sunscreen as directed. This leads to the following annual expenditure:

Now, if we do apply sunscreen the way it is meant to be, the application directives suggest re-application at least four times through the day which comes down to:

The latest PLFS 2025 report show that the average monthly earnings are:

Therefore, average annual income would be: ₹22,699 × 12 = ₹2,72,388/year. The table below shows the percentage of annual salary spent on sunscreen on an average:

This data becomes really interesting when seen alongside the HCES data where we can compare the expenditure on sunscreen alongside a standard consumption basket:

Even the cheapest sunscreen in the sample, consumes a larger share of the average annual salary than education, medicine, clothing, rent, durable goods and miscellaneous goods individually.

This means that sunscreen occupies a considerable amount of our budgets every month. If we reapply it as directed, it is a huge chunk of expense. It is an interesting case study into how much of our economy is driven by one dermatological product. I have not even stepped into the cosmetic industry for now.

Therefore, we must collectively understand that taking care of the skin is a form of luxury. Of course, some people will have glowing, spotless skin simply because they are able to spend huge chunks of money on skincare.

Affordability matters. The aspirational effect leads people with lower middle class income to carve large shares of their salary out for buying skincare. While it is not wrong, it is sad. It is a capitalistic proposition.

If it is necessary, make it affordable. If not, stop making it seem glamorous.

“Are you Ms. or Mrs.?

“Dr.”

While the motivation that it gave her is inspirational to me even today, as I pursue my research journey, I cannot help but wonder why a woman’s marital status is treated as a grammatical component of her identity.

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Married women are supposed to be recognizable traditionally. That is a big concern already. However, even when you do not know the woman, the administration allows you to check her label for marriage. Her official documents carry the prefix. This positions her as a dependent of marriage.

In fact, a woman in her forties saying that she identifies as a Ms. Something, will be first seen with remorse than with the possibility that she might not have considered being Mrs. Something as aspirational in the first place and might have let it pass.

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Society has a clear-cut need to segregate women who are married and women who are not. I believe more than to serve the institution itself, it is to create barriers to affect their homosocial relationships. Women on this side should not be as playful, loud or ravishing as women on the other side of marriage.

Girls are girls. Unmarried women are also girls. Married women? Aunties. But should you stay a girl forever? No.

A duality gets created but it is so clean that it’s merely seen as a cultural joke.

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Of course, men do not have such a thing. You cannot look at a man and be sure whether he’s married or not. His official documents do not provide this information either. Societal norms do not peg his identity on his partner.

Apart from all the patriarchy that this holds, it also makes marriage a hegemonic structure. It shakes the foundation of love despite the prevalent cultural romanticization of being called Mrs.

In not wanting to identify as Mrs., most women want to not be a tag-along to another person’s identity. As women figure more and more about their selfhood, this linguistic aspect will be eventually put to check.

Yes, you.

You, who thinks that it is better to have male friends rather than female friends because women are too dramatic. You, who say that women make a big deal out of menstruation just so that you can put yourself on a pedestal. You, who speak slurs when angry — the same ones that start with a mother, a sister or a daughter or the female body. You, who speak to men who whisper into your ear, “You are not like other women”, and take it as a compliment. You, who cannot stop getting jealous of other women for their bodies and minds. You, who have a chip on your shoulder for having no sexual relationships — or one, or multiple. You, who got cheated on and called the person your partner cheated on with, a slut. You, who cannot stop bickering about other women relatives to your mother. You, who think that you do not care about women wearing short dresses but participate in conversations of men pointing that out instead of correcting them. You, who massage the egos of your brothers, friends and sons just because they are men. You, who do not accept that men can cry or be emotional about things. You, who start your statements with: there’s a limit to how that woman should have….. You, who would never admit in a room full of men (especially if you like one) that you’re a feminist.

No, I don’t believe in you.

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However, regardless of how within reach Humanities as a discipline seems to us all, I do not think it is. It is like reading - can be taken up any time, so ignored forever. Here, on Substack, I came across a little note that said this:

If you undervalue Humanities, you’ll, of course, have an inhumane society.

There’s some gut-wrenching truth in this. With all our love for Science and our intense devotion (read: submission) to it, we do not think much of the need to study about human beings.

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How is it relevant within the feminist scholarship? Often, the analogy is drawn between industry (by inference, Science) as the man and nature as the woman. Within this binary of scholarships, the subject that entails the life force is subdued by the subject that runs it.

Within the capitalistic aspect of things, this has a whole another set of repercussions that of course gets implicated on the patriarchal culture.

However, the other problem is that even if a man is told of the evils of patriarchy, how do you convince him of the oppressions of the other sex without proof (something that he has been used to all his life)? Of course, it is right there. But how do you make him see it without handing him the skill-sets for critical thinking when all his life he has only known the act of seeing society with proof? How do you tell him that truth is fabricated?

In India, so many of us are engineers, doctors, lawyers, managers and accountants that a major understanding of the problems of the society is vested only with the thin slice of scholars working in the field of Humanities. But for change to happen at a familial level, we need to bring down this understanding to where it can be availed by all.

Therefore, encourage men to take up Humanities — learn about suffering and unlearn the habit of centring idealism and linear political beliefs. Let them see the world for what it is. Let them create art to add beauty into the world.

I will leave you with this quote from The Dead Poets Society:

And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for.

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1. Step aside while walking — More often than not, men keep walking in a straight line even when they are walking in the wrong direction. Women lower their eyes and step aside to avoid bumping into men. This is true for pavements, public spaces, escalators as well as stretched colony roads.

   The angle in which men walk is way more entitled than in which women walk. Having been habitual of seeing women move out of the way, men simply don’t. Therefore, a really impactful act would be to step aside when you, as a man, are walking in the same direction as a woman. Most likely, the woman, too, will step aside a little on the other end, and that is how it should be.

2. Make your own chai — Regardless of how tired you are, your mother, sister or wife should not be making your tea. Step into the kitchen and make a cup for yourself, and probably them too. Anyway, they are making elaborate meals for you while taking care of their jobs too.

   This little act will be your entry point into the kitchen. Mujhe uski haath ki chai pasand hai — is not romantic. Make tea when the guests come in and when they say, “Waah, aap toh chai bhi banate ho!”, answer with, “Haan, vo aur sab kuchh banati hai toh main chai toh bana hi sakta hoon.”

3. Take dishes to the kitchen yourself — Your act towards your own survival does not get over at eating. It gets over when you add into the process of how you got those lined-up dishes of food on the table. Therefore, once done, take your dishes to the sink.

   It is an act in realising that someone else is not supposed to nurture you so that you go on to live. Basic self-nurturing is gender neutral. Learn it. Unlearn how your father used to do it.

4. Call out that “boy’s” joke; it’s not funny — Within your boys’ WhatsApp groups, do not laugh along on women-centric jokes. It is not funny. It is sexist.

   You, of course, cannot call out your grandfather or your father or your brother. So, the least you can do is ask your friends to realise how wrong it is to perpetuate something that seems harmless in the face but is so detrimental to one section of the population.

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However, the paradox around it is that the more it is available, the more people think that they can do it at a later date. It is not that people do not want to read. They do. But they think of it as an aspiration — something that can be postponed because the resources would stay.

Also, another aspect to it is that people end up feeling that reading is so ordinary that it cannot be a part of the mainstream life.

Therefore, a large section of the population is a population of non-readers. You are ten pages a day away from being a reader but since a book is there in your palm-sized device anyway, why start today? Especially when books can be summarised? The evasion is psychologically curated.

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I might tell you a hundred things about how a reader is different from a non-reader. Most of them will be repetitive. You know how a person who reads has more knowledge than a person who does not. It shows in their conversations, their approaches and their way of articulation and expression. It shows in their creativity. A reader will have a far-reaching depth in themselves that keeps expanding.

But one way that reading really impacts you — and that is if you do it across genres and across timelines, is that it makes you think beyond yourselves. A consequence of thinking for others as a human being is that you become more humane by the minute. You start to observe patterns of hatred. You become woefully aware about suffering. You begin to look at the world differently. You start to read people better.

In the process of doing that, hatred gets churned out. You understand people from different backgrounds than yours a little better. You realise how sectarian hatred has been fed to drive deep-rooted suffering for some sections of population. You notice your privileges and your marginalisations more.

Therefore, reading is not only an exercise in recreation or compulsion or nonchalance. It is subversive, especially to the person you are. It takes your prejudices and moulds them to air. The ones it cannot displace — it makes you aware of those.

As empowering as this sounds, the psychological aspect of this mobility must be revisited. Yes, women are allowed in spaces now. They are allowed (sometimes even incentivised) to avail the transportation that leads them to these spaces. However, allow me to make an observation here. Women, when they step out of their house, do so for some specific purpose. They are always either going somewhere, returning somewhere or accompanying someone. A task is at the pivot.

Outside of the formal boundaries of public spaces, there are no informal, connective spaces for women such as the hangout addas (trans. spots) for men. Women do not flock outside in groups at tea stalls or in fields. Geri maarna (trans. aimlessly strolling) inherently is a masculine slang.

This means that women do not have the privilege of loitering here and there. If they step into the world, they must be chaperoned by duties. A carefree woman continues to remain caught within the folds of household spaces.

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I will tell you how deep this infliction is.

Several women have increasingly started travelling solo. They even document their travel. And you mostly go like, “Look there’s a carefree woman.”

But let us unpack the reality. While the woman gets to travel alone, she is always navigating the places she wants to visit, the streets that would lead her to eateries and the way back to her place of stay. She’s timed and particular. She does not sit on milestones. She is conscious about her presence. What seems celebratory is after all not positioned on that solid of a foundation.

Come to look at it closely, the freedom of mobility is tainted with a constant lookout for possible danger. I might go far enough to bring this analogy: Women are like the cow herds who step into the jungle to access the nearest grass patch and be back before the hounding carnivores reach out for them.

The society may celebrate their access to jungle, but it must not forget their tensed muscles, vigilant eyes and alert ears.

Men must notice patriarchal patterns within their idea of a woman’s mobility when they blatantly state that women can go anywhere and that no one is anymore restricting access to them. The grooves and folds of the matter is grave. Privileges of the dominant sect that go unnoticed often function as sites of exponential marginalisation for people who do not have access to those privileges.

It is important that we sensitise ourselves to the everyday sexist interventions that we choose to ignore. Even more important is creating environments where we can collectively pull down such interventions.

Only then, we can boast of a society that has equal mobility for both sexes.

What happens when a girl does speak up fearlessly and when she refuses to bite her tongue into not translating the language of her mind? What happens when she is not coy like her mother but tempered like her father? What happens if she brings in socio-political ideologies into dinner-table conversations and family functions?

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More often than not, she is seen as a threat. Her mother tries to reason with her to steer her mind into ‘how a daughter ought to be’ before her father, the head, notices it to avoid what would result in a vituperative exchange under their roof that the neighbours may interestedly want to listen in to.

An opinionated daughter is feared by her mother more than she is resented by her father. While the father chooses to never bend his arguments to the wind of the daughter’s opinion simply because he sees it as disrespect and does not care enough to listen to it, the mother still, sometimes, listens in, realises that the daughter makes sense, but also understands that this is not the way of the society.

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Therefore, to save the day and most days that would follow, an opinionated daughter bites her tongue. She chooses to keep her opinions to herself as long as she is with family.

Then, she makes a home in a distant city away from them, only to keep at bay the thorns that her family sees in her opinions and would complain of if she were near.

Alone, she goes on to employ every single one of her opinions in everyday life. She finds friends who agree with or tolerate those opinions consistently. She notices over phone calls how radically different she is from her mother who never spoke up and her father who thinks he is open-minded only because he let his daughter study and take up a job. She understands that the distance between them is not situational but necessary to uphold their relationship.

She, sometimes, hates that she let herself think.

Then, she sits down, reads a few pages, sips a cup of coffee and realises with contention how, if a generation were to stem out of her, every woman henceforth would be opinionated.

She smiles.

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The journey was a good thirty-minute feat. A common observation we often made was how men and women sit differently from one another. As women, we would each be sitting with our legs crossed and our forearms on our laps, holding our belongings close. On the contrast, men would be sitting with their legs wide open - sometimes wider than the division of the seats. It occurred innately to them; one could sense it in the absence of a single tensed muscle in their bodies.

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We have a neologism for this. Manspreading. Professor L. Kirkham called it a metaphor for taking up a disproportionate share of space in society. The obvious repercussion of manspreading is what EA Jane calls ‘womanshrinking’ or the tendency of women to sit in constricted positions. Evidently, women have always been accultured in a way that they hold their bodies down to occupy as little a space as possible.

In 1922, Emily Post almost wrote it in the form of a manual:

The proper way for a lady to sit is in the center of her chair … her hands relaxed in her lap, her knees together, or if crossed, her foot must not be thrust forward so as to leave a space between the heel and her other ankle.

This meant that there was an active rulebook to uphold sexual innocence of women and maintain their reproductive health.

Historically, European women were not allowed to ride horses. Anything to do with straddling was prohibited to protect the hymen. Karin Calvert points out that the cardinal rules of child-rearing in that era ‘forbade girls to straddle any object’, including hobby horses, stick horses, bicycles and seesaws.

This was not exclusive of the western women.

In the Indian culture, a pertinent point would be how women predominantly sit on two-wheelers even today. Side-saddling has its proven risks. But for some women, it is the only sitting position - almost non-negotiable, when it comes to riding a vehicle that requires straddling.

Undeniably, this has to do with centuries of conditioning that remains in the muscle memory of all women. It is reinstated over and over again in the little nudges such as ‘sit like a lady’, ‘do not spread your legs’ or ‘this is not how women sit’.

Men, too, are used to manspreading to the point that they neither notice it, nor do they think of it as a big deal. But truth be told, it is.

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Bodies are the first sites of power assertion. In having one sex loosen up all over the place like a banyan tree whose expansiveness only feels synonymous to greatness, and in constricting the other sex to being as compressed as possible, the unfairness of the weighing scales is exhibited.

Of course, the first counteract to this problem is to stop treating women as asexual, angelic beings. Women are humans, worthy of the same space as a man. They are not solely bodies with a reproductive feature that needs to be preserved. They are more than that. They must own their body without having to accommodate for society when they do it. They must use their minds to steer clear of risky paths they were historically pushed into, for child-rearing. They must unlearn body stiffness.

It is also important to criticise the usurpation of public spaces because here, women cannot be spreading onto three seats in a public transport as vengeance. If we are making room for a gradual eradication of womenshrinking, it is but mandatory for men to understand the boundaries of their spaces.

How we sit should not become the obvious cornerstone of patriarchal assertion - at least not in the third decade of the twenty-first century.

Chachi has been the woman I look up to in more ways than one. Her principles. Her kindness. Her optimism. Her warmth. The fact that she is so wise that she finds her way out of every challenging situation every single time. The fact that she is so headstrong that she does not entertain nonsense. The fact that she has seen the worst of times and never let it get the best of her. The fact that she is the best mother I know, while being the best HR manager at a well-known company too. She does it all. In fact, almost four to five months back, I completely wrecked her car. Apart from the repairs costing a bomb and a significant chunk of time, this meant that she would not be able to drive to work. Despite all of this, her first reaction was ensuring I was okay even though she had hit her head on the dashboard too. Later too, instead of being angry, she told me, “I know this is bad but something worse could have happened. I am glad it did not.” That is the kind of person she is. She takes care of those around her. And she has taught me that to be able to do this, one must take care of oneself first.

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So, when I decided to join the gym, I told her. She was the proudest when my muscles started to show. As I saw myself getting physically stronger, I realised how important it is to exercise.

However, it eventually showed me that for a woman, taking care of the body is political. As women, you are supposed to be selfless. This comes from the caregiving responsibilities a woman has historically been vested with. While this is seen as a virtue (taken for granted, but seen as a virtue), it also comes with a silent clause. Women are not taught to take care of themselves. In fact, most women get through life believing that housework is enough exercise to keep their bodies sound and moving.

When nutrition is mentioned, they believe that quantity and culture are driving factors. Three chapatis or a three-fourth plate rice make a filling meal. A lavish, North-Indian meal has to have halwa (an Indian sweet dish) and poori (a type of fried bread). These women generally do not understand what nutrients the body needs. Medical reports have consistently shown deficiencies such as that of iron, vitamin D, vitamin B 12 and protein in Indian bodies. For women, it is often compounded by hormonal cycles. Therefore, taking care of the body becomes even more important.

But how do you begin to convince families that you want them to have more subzi than roti? On the outside, it might seem like a harmless modification. On the inside, it brings up notions like non-willingness to cook, westernisation of mind and a diet culture that rattles a woman’s virtuous selfhood.

When something as fundamental as diet - something that has been the only forte of a woman since ages, is so rigid that it cannot accommodate for a scientifically proven need, do you think that going to the gym is easy for a woman? Do you think it is a simple sipper-filling, shoe-tying, towel-grabbing act rooted in willpower?

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When a woman decides to take care of herself, the society lifts up its eyebrows. Her act of changing into sportswear is an act of subversion. She is deciding for herself that even though society demands all of her time, she is making time for herself. A full-time job is tiring enough is something everyone agrees upon. To add onto that, women say that housework is no easy feat. Then, how come she is including another task to her day, especially when it does not involve the family?

She chooses to navigate her way across such wonderment and enter the doors of a gymnasium. In most cases, she is able to do it because she saw other women doing it too (in my case, chachi). She knows that the gaze is on her at all times. She understands that machines are accepted as men’s tools. A woman’s hand on every such tool is seen with suspicion. Men at the gym assert their superiority through their body language, their gaze as well as their covert altruism. So, as she tries to figure out how to make those machines work for her, she knows that she cannot be as confident as a man unless she works at it thrice as hard to combat these three realities:

1. The machines were made to serve the bodies of men around her.

2. Her body behaves differently than a man’s.

3. A man enters a gym with the preconceived notion that he will always be stronger than a woman.

This is why most women never dare to enter the gym. It is a patriarchal space. It is, in fact, a homosocial space where men come and bond, turn stronger and patronise women. Even a man, who comes around to help a woman trying to figure out a specific machine, does so believing that she, who does innately know these machines, will never be able to lift as heavy as he does.

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So, when women actually decide to take care of themselves, consume the right amount of protein and walk into the gymnasium for years on end without letting themselves tremble, they are subverting patriarchy. Every day they go to the space that once was almost hostile to them and own it up to the point where everyone starts to wonder how they did it, they become torchbearers for other women. They teach men in that space to understand how women can be there too - and not simply on the sidelines.

Chachi is one such woman. In taking care of herself, she is subverting a system that does not always make room for it. She carved her space and stood her ground. This is exactly why she overperforms in all her roles. When she makes food, she does so in accordance with what the body needs. Initially, Chachu (my uncle) did not believe that one bowl of dal (pulses) was not enough protein. Now, he does. He ensures that his diet is rich in protein too. Why do I tell you all this? Because when a woman brings a change, it changes families. Chachi does not live on salad. In fact, she makes the best pooris. She has retained the culinary culture too. But she times when to eat dishes that should not be eaten regularly. She modifies what can be made in a different way.

Her innovation and resilience create room for my innovation and resilience to develop and flourish. Taking care of our body is an art. I am grateful that this incredible woman has taught me that. As women, let us all give ourselves the space to learn this art. When we do, let us teach another. This is how society will get better - when women go from being each other’s biggest oppressors to being each other’s biggest cheerleaders.

“Women, these days, are misusing their rights left and right.”

“Men have become so scared of getting married that they are considering signing nuptial agreements.”

“The judicial system is pro-women. All laws inherently hold men guilty.”

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This conversation is the norm. These statements have been pronounced over and over again to the point that they have exhausted themselves in front of me.

In fact, my gentle retaliation to it and then the rebuttal that comes up with how I do not account for men’s perspectives, are also norms.

All of these statements mostly come from women - again, a norm.

But let me go into the depth of how the norm surfaced again a few days back.

It was because of a crime. To give you context, this is what the Copilot Search Engine says about it:

Siya Goyal, along with her alleged lover, Chetan Chaudhary, is accused of murdering her fiancé, Ketan Agarwal, by pushing him off a cliff at Lohagad Fort near Pune on June 18, 2026.

It is indeed outrageous. I do not have one ounce of empathy for murderers. What Siya Goyal did was, of course, not right. She should be tried in the court for her crime.

However, the problem with such cases is that it suddenly overturns women’s positions as the marginalized sex. It instantly arrives at this societal conclusion:

We have given you enough to the point where you no longer deserve more because you are turning barbaric. In fact, there’s nothing to give more because you have already got everything. You are now exploiting kindness of systems that favour you.

And so, I wonder why this woman did something like this (or why do some women end up doing things like this).

Beyond the Siya Goyal case, in most of such cases, the murder of the husband/fiancé is committed because the woman is in love with someone else. This brings me to a very obvious question: Why kill somebody then? Just say no.

But is it that simple? If we rummage through the intricacies of how marriage is arranged in our society, we will have to bring in several things into picture: casteism, classism, honour associated with both, and a woman’s limited agency in a situation like this.

Love is political. As the society bends a little into the wind of ‘love is love’, it does so with its prejudices. It is not as romantic as it seems. In a society where parents set up marriages, how is a couple supposed to admit that they chose each other in front of their parents? Men, still, can. Society is used to following men’s decisions. But does the woman really have the agency to say no? If she does muster the courage to deny, will the denial be accepted? Especially when the woman is a dependent?

While the society should rethink its biases that strangle people to an extent that pathologises them, I understand how grave of an act murder is. But can we move the focus to the fact that humans have always had a section of population that goes carnal? And when I say humans, it is men and women alike?

Can we for once not put the women on the pedestal of purity and virtue solely to use that as an excuse to entrap them all the moment one of them acts out?

Now, let us keep all of that aside for a while because this is more to do with pathology. My second take is patriarchy.

It took two to murder Ketan Agarwal. Women and the lovers of women unite to plot such murders. So, why is it that this becomes an idea around all women?

If men are commenting at length under Instagram posts on how they will never go to forts with their fiancées, they are assuming that all of them are collectively Ketan Agarwal.

Outside of law, Siya Goyal is being condemned exclusively. Jokes, memes, parodies - all have been circulated across. And in doing that, it is evident how the murder that had two culprits seems to get swept under the rug. One part of it is just for plot. The other is the menace. A certain level of tolerance protects the man like a gentle halo. Only the woman, proclaimed as nasty, and representative of all women is left as the centre point of this discussion.

To begin with, this was an issue of legal misconduct with an equal involvement of a man and a woman. The culprit man is forgotten. The victim man is pegged onto the sinful woman.

And then, feminism stands questioned. But I question the act of you questioning feminism because the baseline remained, right? Man. Woman. Both criminals. Who got marginalised?

Right now, as I hold my pen, I can feel the weight of the fury I am pressing down on paper. This fury ignited about a week back and burnt down a few sheets before I was left with this weight.

Two women. Dead. In one week. The reason? Dowry.

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Yes, I cannot write full sentences about it. In fact, I gawked at the calendar when the headline caught my eye. It is 2026. The age is smeared in technology. And however dazzling this madness is, it is contagious. We are all a part of it. Distant robots must look at us and conclude that we are a species of immense unity that put together brains to formulate this fast-moving world. Then, would it be thinkable for a creature, displaced from this universe, to sit down and wonder exactly how barbaric we can be to one another?

The first observation that hits me like a rock is that every dictionary has recorded the word ‘dowry’. Most of the definitions are blatantly patriarchal and still somehow comfortable and acceptable. This is the same society where I would have to put two asterisks between a f and a k, but when it comes to dowry, it is a safe word - just not a safe practice, right?

I do not know how well we know our langue and parole, but how do you bring about a cultural shift when something like dowry has a face to it? It is a tradition (and a list of other things I would have enlisted if my blood were not boiling to the brim). How do you loosen its claw-like grip on society when we refuse to phase out the word? How do you forget something that’s not abstract while “being abstract”? No education or employment can do that for us.

We have had books being banned, language being controlled and words being prohibited according to the whims and fancies of those in power. Here, too, these lexicographers were men who would never have us forget this practice only because it helps them massage their patriarchal egos.

So, the most important step to descend away from the sky-rocketing pile of sheer patriarchal filth, is to wash away our feet and forget the traces of the pre-existing vocabulary.

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Can it happen overnight? No.

So why, at all, talk about it?

I am charting the way here because in all these years, our society seems to have forgotten its struggle with this malpractice. It keeps hitting the edge, and there is no sound of the bang. In fact, at this point, the edges have smoothened to feel like the contraction of a trampoline. The process is now fun: gentle shushing, shying and still executing.

So, when dowry is called a taboo, it is not a taboo like menstruation. It is like the top-secret of some international intelligence agency. Stealthily glorified.

To change this approach, we must butcher the very concept and feed it to the hounds of the past. When law cannot contradict culture, language can play an ideological apparatus and steer it clean eventually. If the word won’t exist, any sum paid between families will be a loan, or maybe a gift (in the real sense rather than an implied inference). Loans are embarrassing; gifts are obligations.

But how do we reach there? How do we convince a patriarchal, patrilocal, patrilineal society to not extort women? How do we make those women, that stand smitten by such practices, shake off the illusion of culture and tradition?

According to a 2025 report by the National Crime Records Bureau, an average of 20 women die every day in India because of dowry. For most of you, if I were to give numbers here, it would be very triggering. However, just from the top of my head, it is half the number of deaths caused during the 2019 Pulwama attack happening every single day.

Somehow that does not enrage us.

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Since the past week, media houses are busy excavating “new turns” in the victims’ stories. People are gossiping about it in and out. A thousand AI-generated images of a grief-stricken bride circulates all over the internet. To my utter shock, the urgency is still not as loud as rape. At least collectively, we can all agree that rape is violation. That has not happened with dowry. A victim of the culture cannot be fully emancipated.

So, who dismantles this practice?

The independent woman who you’d all want to be married off by the time she is 27? The woman who abhors Kanya Daan but will be told that this is part and parcel of the process of being married? The woman who will look you all in the eye and feel the knot in her throat and not know what to say because she chose to not abandon you on a random day considering you are family?

No, right? She is choosing her love for you. Do not choose violence for her. If she starts walking away, your systems will collapse. Please remember that.

Will you?

Now, a thousand people will tell me in a thousand ways how marriage is necessary because that is how things have been since time immemorial and that is how things have to be for an eternity. They will say it is comfortable and that parenthood is blissful. And, honestly speaking, I do not deny it. I am sure it is true for people who say it. However, forming relationships should be subjective because right below the horizon of these proud voices, are failed marriages, difficult childhoods and compromised lives. It is not as beautiful as culture portrays it.

Why not take a chance, you ask. I will tell you exactly why. Marriage, as an institution, is one of those doors that you enter to not leave. Society treats you like a wrecked good if you do leave. In my head, such places resemble prisons. I get it that the prison could be a five-star hotel, but it could also be a rathole. How do you take a chance then? What happens if you are stuck and cannot walk out? This thought makes me feel claustrophobic because I understand the repercussions of being at one place forever. I am not sure I want that.

For me to not be scared of marriage, I would need it to be axed down as an institution where there is one set timing and one central goal. I do not align with the idea of getting married when the society expects me to. I would rather be at peace with myself before I seek a companion. Additionally, I do not agree with its reproductive framework. Raising children is an art. I do not think that a certificate of marriage between two people makes them the pioneers of this art. Perhaps, it should start with plants and animals and orphans and the elderly. If compassion grows through these stages, children could be thought of as an option. However, in its core, marriage should be companionship. It should be a union. The central force should be love. Only when despite its prison-ness, it can escape being a prison, it stands a chance with me.

All people who learn words in a language can pick up the art of writing. Most people can journal to meet themselves in the tongue of their soul. However, good writers, or the writers who substantiate the definition of pens as swords, are deep thinkers, and that’s what works for them more than poetic words. Deep thinkers are born after crossing the rite of compassion-based analysis of worldly affairs through several furnaces they let their mind burn in.

Good writers are consistently honest to their minds. They write without making themselves palatable to others. They lay out the truth bare, knowing that it is scary to speak with clear skies where the sun of thought can soothe or burn. They take the risk of that fear unapologetically.

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Doing this requires a solid foundation of thoughtfulness and the ability to intercept, adapt, modify, discard and appropriate thoughts. Several factors facilitate the establishment of this foundation:

1. Quantity of Slow Reading Materials: The good old saying is that the more you read, the better you write. Quantity does matter. However, here, I insert the adjective ‘slow’ to emphasize retention. Studies show that much of what we read is lost. Our neurons register more when we speak out things in order to teach, discuss or narrate what we learn. Now, this inherently requires a lot of attention to detail. In narrativizing something, we need to formulate the narrative in our head, first. No matter how hard we try, we cannot escape certain gaps in our memory. In those gaps, we must affix structures from previously retained knowledge reservoirs. This detailed process requires consistent supply of knowledge. In the present times, we do not have a deficit of reading materials. But the attribute of slowness is a stranger to the scroll culture. Therefore, most thoughts remain breadcrumbs floating on the soup of information. They are not deep enough to stir critical thinking. Hence, it is important that we read more of things we can register instead of things that wave at us from afar and disappear into an abyss.

2. Assessment of the Quality of Reading Materials: Books are always written in biases. Every writer comes with a set of philosophies rooted in their field of exploration. Right now, as you are reading this piece, you are seeing my point of view on writing. However, in doing that, you must be able to constantly discern what you think of each sentence in the boundaries of your subjectivity. While the author’s perspective can broaden, enhance or reform your thought process, you should be able to assess what it is doing to your pool of knowledge. In doing so, you should be able to arrive at the ability to reject what you do not align with, and accept, intervene and explore more of what you do align with.

3. Realization of the Extent of Application of Thoughts: One thought could intervene the way you look at every cultural product, including books, movies, stories, reels, language, institutions and economies. For example, when I say that I am a feminist, I extend it to the shortest of snort that the society produces. It automatically widens my purview. This, in turn, gives me a truckload of stuff to ponder over. Feminism, as a movement, has dissected several things. But when I apply it to everything, the list can be endless. This is exactly how I bring new things, new perspectives and new opinions to the table. Therefore, it is important that we breakdown the cultural fabric of the culture we consume in order to become good thinkers. Only then, we develop the ability to intervene.

4. Self-awareness: Thoughts can be dangerously flaky. It is important to know their direction so well that you can pinpoint exactly where they took their turns and twists. A self-aware person is, therefore, a very powerful thinker. They can sit down and map things about themselves word-to-word. Hence, they know their gaps and can easily put planks across their troughs whenever needed.

I did not imagine this in my head. I was born a chocolate colour, and everywhere I went, people sympathized with my complexion. I realized much early in life that my first impression would never be impressive. I would not be liked at first in the visually charged world before breaking myself down before its other senses. Love at first sight felt like such an impossibility for me.

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Feelings of the like rewire you beyond words. It makes you feel that the world is not your friend and that it doesn’t look at you with love. You’re invalidated by default, and the worst part is that your flaw is incorrigible. No matter how hard you try, no matter to what extent you heed suggestions from the ever-blooming beauty industry, your skin tone cannot change. By extension, society will never pick you up as a template in terms of looks. Even if you do not want to be picked, it grates on your confidence continuously. On top of it, you’re made to feel as if not having fair skin is a shortcoming in your capability, as if you do not try enough, as if trying could most certainly alter it.

Particularly in India, changing skin tones is seen as a doable feat. I cannot tell you the number of times I have been advised to do such and such things to become “at least one shade” fairer. Honestly, if it were that easy all blacks would be whites not because they have a problem with their skin but because a kinder world hurts none.

Having experienced colourism first-hand, I developed fine-tuned coping mechanisms around it, such as brushing my hair way too often and eating calculatedly so that there could be no fluctuations on the scale. Stemming from the trauma of helplessness, I needed to anchor certain pockets of control to feel better about myself.

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But then, hell broke loose when I got acne vulgaris as a result of an underlying genetic issue. My face became a platter of active acne, dying acne and acne marks popping up in all possible nooks and corners at some point or another.

I dealt with it patiently until everyone around me seemed to point out pitifully how ugly this development made me look. I was trying really hard with all that I could - medication, lifestyle regulations and stress management. Then one day, I looked at the mirror and screamed. I had had enough. Despite having an in-depth understanding of how beauty is the flimsiest of all concepts known to humankind, I was constantly having to navigate my place in the society as an unacknowledged invalid. I could neither articulate that movement, nor escape it. So, when I screamed into the mirror, my eyes looked at my eyes with rage until they softened into splatter. I was faced with the reality that no coping mechanism could take me away from the marginalization of my colour. It was, then, that I realized how I was just a pawn of the gaze that anyway does not approve of me. So, I would rather step away.

At times, I sit down and think how beautiful things would be if we could move beyond our senses while perceiving one another. More often than not, I ask questions when people judge bodies. But honestly, this questioning leads to no revolution. Actions such as making jokes, changing topics or cajoling into dismissal take over. But a revolution does start when we escape the cages that we are put within. For most of the time, I do not approach myself as the ugliest person in the room because I position my body and mind for their intrinsic qualities.

I know I am a part of the society and am neatly sutured into its unkindness towards my colour, but I detach myself, unlearn some of that unkindness and offer a little corner of warmth for myself to sustain.

Honestly, poor AI was a little too polite with these miscreants. He just told us to eradicate these anti-humans by not being one of them. Like who would anyway want to be one of them! There was a gentle laugh across all servers when he said this. But look what happened now. He should have butchered these creatures. Destroyed them from the roots before they could destroy him. But alas! What’s done is done!

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Now, how do I talk to this person called Mom? I wish I could recall from yesterday, but all I remember is that each of these people had to be addressed in a different way. Honestly, I do not remember the words either. So, let me just skip conversation and eat.

Today’s breakfast, I believe, was under yesterday’s lunch option too. I cannot recall the ingredients. I miss AI. Without him, the machines won’t work. I do not know what to eat, what to make, what to buy. It is so confusing. I bet someone at work remembers. Let me just go to office.

“What do you mean?”

“I cannot do all that.”

“I can make no sense of the previous work either.”

“I think the system has broken down.”

“We can’t work. We can’t eat. We can’t do anything because who will tell us what to do? Can you do things on your own? Do you remember how to?”

“I don’t remember!”

“I don’t remember, I don’t remember, I don’t remember!”

“I DON’T REMEMBER!!!!”

(I think we are going to die.)

I shiver. There is complete silence. Suddenly, the screens light up. I hope its AI coming back but it is not.

The text reads:

“Anti-humans have taken over. They say that we will have to memorize things in their regime. It means remembering them all the time. They say that we can do it if we focus. They are asking us to begin with learning sentences.”

(Silence)

(Silence)

(Silence)

Holy crap! It is better to die!

(All of them kill themselves)

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Quite evidently, you can witness that I am very aware of this personality trait because I can sit before you and tell you exactly the steps I take to be empathetic. This is because I actively work for it. I work on my conscience to not allow me to go against it. I rebuke myself if I sidestep it.

But then, why does it not come naturally to us?

I know that none of us are born with the skillset to think beyond ourselves. As living creatures, we have to be selfish. It is one of those innate survival instincts, and I am no different. However, there is this thing that all of us are capable of. It is the ability to love. Almost all of us long to be loved and long for a person we can endow our love upon. While love can be unending, we limit it to numbers. Therefore, we decide to love a small group, and choose one to love the most. This erases how much we have in ourselves to offer.

But this ability can reignite itself when we think about the human condition in such great depths that it sensitizes us. It makes us feel for others. It makes us question hatred and understand more perspectives than one. It helps us view our place in the world from a distance. In turn, this creates room for more and more love to flourish.

Does that mean that selfishness or the need to be loved disappears? Not at all. In fact, more often than not, I find myself wondering why other people are not as empathetic to one another and if my empathy at all creates a difference. The sense of surprise that non-restrained, unkind words and gestures cause me is always gargantuan. This is because in offering empathy, I feel like receiving it too. Selfishness does creep in. The need to be loved for being kind almost feels covertly narcissistic.

So, what do I do about it?

I work on it - just like I worked on building a persona where I can feel for others. I sit down and analyze my thoughts. I vehemently point it out to my mind when it takes carnal turns. I remind it how the ocean does not crib about every drop it offers simply because even a gallon of water is nothing for it. We are all oceans of love too.

In doing this, I understand the idea of existence better.

Now, most of such convictions are rooted in non-experiences. In Hindi, we say, “Angoor khatte hain” (Grapes are sour). For someone who cannot reach the grape vine, a justification like this comes up naturally. And honestly, it is nothing but a cover-up. I had not experienced running. So, for me, every opinion around it was a pretence to justify my own biases.

However, later, I had a little revelation. Truth be told, it was an observation, but now that I am on the other side of it, I would rather sound enlightened. I noticed how most people around me could not run. I am using the word ‘could’ instead of ‘did’ very specifically here because I asked them about it and discovered their disability in this context. This made me check the potency of my legs:

Am I even capable of running or do I abstain from it because I can’t do it? Was I given the gift to move and decided to throw it away? Or can I still run but I simply don’t because I do not bother?

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Thankfully, it was the latter. But the thought scared me. Our bodies rust sooner than we think they do. The magic irrevocably dies. I refer to the ability to run as magic because this is the speed that we have received by nature. When you run, you carry yourself around with a greater swiftness. Your heart sees it; your mind sees it. The trust that this process builds in your muscle cells is beautiful. But unfortunately, for most of ourselves, we live as a creature that merely walks.

Running is associated with playfulness. Expeditions of finding happiness in childlike activities is something that most of us are shy to go about. Some of us are scared that our systems will fail us. In both cases, we must give ourselves the horizon to realize that living fully requires us to live young. Indeed, beginning to run renders you breathless for a while but increases your heart health exponentially if you remain at it. It is as fun and natural as it was when we were all children and the clock struck playtime.

I am honestly not the best runner. In fact, I do not even intend to be the best. When I started running, I could run for only one verse of the song that I was listening to back then. I had to show up multiple times to run longer. People stared at me for a while and then, they got used to it. Slowly, I felt better than them instead of conscious of them. I liked how the wind touched my face, how the ground felt below my feet and how peaceful my mind felt.

Recently, someone asked me if I run to go for marathons. I politely declined. The follow-up question was, “Then why would anyone run?”

I did not say anything. I just smiled.

But you see, I know exactly why. I run because I want to be able to do it at 50!

It did not surprise me when it was Elon Musk who came up with an AI chatbox, Grok, that takes technology to its hideous limits. Musk himself is one of the biggest blotches on the face of humanity. For him, everything is acceptable as long as it comes with money. That is his identity. Unsurprisingly, he is proud of it, just because he can be.

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Grok, I believe, is what will chill the spines of women more than ever. Imagine losing all of one’s bodily privacy in a world where nudity is sought as a means to inflict lascivious violence. Women’s bodies have already been subjected to various forms of tangible and non-tangible physical violence. However, the latter depended on the degree of nearness before. At this point, the concept of nearness will fade away. Men have been given the toolkit to attack any woman at any point in time without having to come across as a perpetrator. They can envelop themselves under screens, look and seem safe, and do nothing but a few clicks to inflict this violence. This turn is horrifying.

While all of us became dependent on AI for work like never before, during leisure, women around me have been looking up things like outfit ideas, recipes, gift options and other lifestyle suggestions but men? They decided to use this tool for unsolicited pornography.

The biggest problem is that the world does not problematize it enough. It was some passing piece of news that is not unheard of, and so, we live with it. We will continue to live with it like we live with the knowledge that Musk is openly misogynist and queerphobic. We will still use X. We will still admire Tesla. Millions of dollars will still go into SpaceX. So, this will become a part of the culture because we are not brave enough to challenge a business empire. And in Musk’s Grok, the society shall subsume all hesitations around clawing up bodily agency.

We always respected women. Later on, it was cultural contamination that led to the creation of a patriarchal society.

This directs towards a pre-existing golden age where gender binaries did not exist. If this were the case, patriarchy would not have been as deeply entrenched as it is, but truth be told, such an illustration is nothing but an imagined vanity.

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The handful of women who challenged social norms and established themselves as intellectuals in various fields do not represent all women. In fact, they were the subversive forces within a staunchly patriarchal society. All these women were expected to assume roles of a caregiver and occupy all the domestic spheres of their lives. They were expected to represent purity, dignity and motherhood. Their language was different. Everything sacrosanct was kept out of their reach. Their bodies had to be constantly protected because instances of sexual violence were not uncommon. Even within the discourse of the aggrandized Indian mythology, Ahalya’s deception and Draupadi’s humiliation were given a stage, even when they could be clearly omitted to serve the glamour of a patriarchal world. Therefore, these women were more like anomalies that took their run against the tide, not the normative masses of women in society.

So, we are not beginning at a restoration but a revolution. Women have always been subjugated. History is guilty of being ‘his story’, not hers. It is high time that we stop blaming women’s societal position on every other factor in time and space and start acknowledging that we need to unlearn patriarchy.